The Undying Life spell for clerics is wonderful but the buff icons for it are less than ideal. Most people might not care about the appearance of buff icons but as a cleric who reads a lot of buffs and tries to keep several up on her targets throughout raid events, these in particular have proven to be quite troublesome. As a cleric, the ideal buff icon is one that is unique or that stands out because when you're glancing through 40 or so buffs on several targets you want to be able to identify the ones you're responsible for maintaining quickly. Take this buff bar for example: Most of the icons here are fairly unique, with DI (which you see above in the bottom row) perhaps being the most unique because it has the 'eye' icon that isn't used for too many spells. This brings me to the buff icons for Undying Life. It actually consists of two icons, one called 'Undying Life' and another called 'Undying Blessing' which land in unison (a target actually needs room for both or the spell fails). So when a cleric casts the Undying Life spell on a target, these are the icons that appear: The one on the left is for the Undying Life effect (which doesn't seem to do anything but is required for the spell to function, presumably). This icon is the 'red heart' icon that is also used for Promised Rehabilitation (a delayed-trigger heal). The one on the right is for the Undying Blessing effect (the buff that grants the target up to a 19% increase in HP depending on the rank of the Undying Life spell). This icon is the 'axe' icon that is used for a number of other combat proc buffs, including but not limited to: Sluggishness and Aura of Pain (on paladins it is also used for Ardent Fury and Remorse for the Fallen). It is also used for the cleric spell Vow of Virulence. Needless to say, if it's a combat proc buff, there's a good chance this is the icon that is used for it and there is no shortage of those in use. There are a few tricks to identifying Undying Life and Undying Blessing on a target, however: 1. The buff icons for Undying Life land in unison, so they often appear adjacent to each other, like below: In this capture, you'll notice that there is another 'axe' icon (for Vow of Virulence) but because it is not adjacent to a 'red heart' icon, the Undying Blessing icon can be easily identified. This isn't always the case, however, because sometimes tanks have 'gaps' in their buffs that cause the icons to be separated because one of them might take up a higher slot that is available. 2. The icons blink because they are short duration You can't really see it in the capture above, but the icons are both short duration and tend to blink rather quickly (as most buffs do when they are about to fade). Undying Life lasts for 12 sec and blinks almost immediately while Undying Blessing lasts for at least 24 sec and blinks at about the 19 sec mark. The problem with using this to identify Undying Life is that Promised Rehabilitation (which shares an icon with Undying Life) has a short duration and blinks very quickly and some of the combat procs that share the same icon as Undying Blessing have the same issue, so you might have several icons that blink to watch for. So, in a worst-case scenario when the Undying Life buffs are not adjacent to each other and a target has an active Promised Rehabilitation, you can have something like this: 3. Some of the 'axe' buff icons last forever, so if you note their position on a tank you can use that to differentiate Certain 'axe' icon buffs, like Aura of Pain, last a really long time and unless a tank dies or is debuffed, their position in a target's buff window will not change very often. So the Undying Blessing 'axe' will usually show up as a 'fresh' icon further down their buff window. This helps until a tank dies or gets debuffed and the position of long-lasting 'axe' buffs change, though. I have been using these tricks to track Undying Life and Undying Blessing but to be honest, I get pretty tired of it. The spell is very unique among cleric spells in that it provides one of our strongest single-target and group heals and an HP buff that is percentage-based and will thus scale up and be useful forever. It deserved more unique buff icons and got pretty common ones, including one (the 'axe' icon) that is very ill-suited to beneficial non-combat proc buffs. Many clerics will come out and offer tips to use GINA to track it but quite honestly I do not need more GINA clutter and I feel that in this case, a more visible way to track it would be ideal. So if a designer is reading this and agrees with me, I have some suggestions for new Undying Life and Undying Blessing icons: For Undying Life (left) I suggested the icon currently used for Sanctified Ground (LV 88 CLR spell). For Undying Blessing (right) I suggested the icon currently used for Mass Enchant Electrum (LV 14 ENC spell). These are currently used as spell gem icons (not buffs) to my knowledge so I don't know if they can be used for buffs, but if they can, they would be good choices for unique icons. If these aren't acceptable, hopefully other unique icons can be found or created, as more unique icons would greatly help in the usability of the spell for clerics who care about maintaining it on tanks.
See, nobody uses UL! And UL has no wear off messages that you see, only the recipient have one (The undying glory leaves you). You could track with a timer {S} is blessed by undying glory since other see that messages, but as you said, our trigger set is already heavy as it is. Also, that message is only for the heal part, the hp buffs leaves no visible message when it fades. The weapon icon for that is a bit annoying, as tanks usually have 3-4 icons like that and sometimes more than 1 flash simultaneously.
Are you misunderstanding this spell's functioning? The heal and the buff are not separate. The Undying Life off your spell bar casts the highest rank each that you've unlocked of: Undying Lifespring, which is a pretty plain (but powerful and fast) group heal on the casting cleric's group: 1: Increase Current HP by 23872 2: Stacking: Twincast Blocker and Undying Blessing, which is a single target heal with a powerful lingering hp buff: 1: Increase Current HP by 51895 2: Increase Current HP by 12974 (If HP Below 20 Percent) 3: Stacking: Twincast Blocker 5: Increase Max HP by 19.3% You can follow the Lucy link to see that Undying Blessing, which is the hp buff, has the text you mentioned of "{s} is blessed by undying glory." (in GINA parlance). It consistently lasts 24s for high level clerics thanks to the Spell Casting Reinforcement AA.
No, I just don't really care about the heal since this is not what we are talking about in this thread. We are talking about keeping track of the buff and the icon it has.
So, I think I found the perfect icon to replace the current Undying Blessing icon with (thanks to Pano for suggesting it): This bear face icon is currently the buff icon used for "Dichotomic Companion" (ID: 49240), a LV 101 Magician spell. Aside from capturing the natural vigor that the Undying Blessing (ID: 49017-49022 for Ranks 1 to 6) component of Undying Life imbues a target with (it makes the target as tough as a bear!), the bear face icon is way more unique than the current icon used for Undying Blessing, which is shared with a number of other buffs, making it difficult for clerics to tell them apart as mentioned in the original post. I realize I may be fighting a losing battle here, but I refuse to give up when this (at least to someone without knowledge of the coding changes and such involved) seems like a minor change that would greatly enhance the usability of the spell.
